Considering the fact that I eat a lot of fish, (I don’t eat any other kind of animal.) I guess I need to be more aware of where the Salmon I eat comes from after reading this CNN article. It seems that farm raised Salmon has all sorts of issues that wild Salmon does not. I wonder how Tim Salmon feels about this?
Laura Cantrell opened up for Elvis Costello last night. I really enjoyed her set, and she has an absolutely beautiful voice. Don’t take my word on that though, she’s smart enough to have MP3 downloads of several of her songs on her site. Go there and check them out for yourself. It’s odd to me how much I have warmed to music with a heavy country influence over the last few years. It’s good to expand your horizons.
I had every intention last night, after several nights in a row out on the town, of staying home and resting. I have laundry that needs to be done, and various household chores that I have neglected for the past few days. On my way home, I stopped for a cup of coffee, and a kind soul in the record store next to the coffee shop offered me two free tickets to see Elvis Costello that night. When someone offers you free tickets to see Elvis Costello, you take the tickets and go to the show. So I did. In my heartbroken condition, listening to Elvis live was cathartic. Elvis knows just how I feel, the scorned lover, the angry bitter ex-boyfriend. Thanks Elvis.
I’ve had about a week to process the information avalanche I experienced at Devcon. I took a lot away from the conference. Much of it was technical in nature, coding techniques, the use of the new technology in ColdFusion MX and Flash MX. Some of it was soft information, and relationships with incredibly smart people I would never have met otherwise. I would say, however, that the one thing that will stick with me the most is the concept of Rich Internet Applications. That is Macromedia’s term, not mine. In my mind, what this is really is the natural evolution of Internet technology in a way that it now supports true client server type interaction. Now I should say, before you start sending me email that says I am wrong about this and that it is possible to create client serverish interactions using the DOM and DHTML, I know about that stuff. I know it really well because I have been working on the browser based rewrite of a manufacturing ERP system for the last six months. There are a ton of limitations doing this stuff with DHTML, not the least of which is that HTML based UI’s just are not the best way to visually display some kinds of information, or the best way for users to interact with that information. Flash and Flash Remoting will give us the ability to do much of this stuff in an easier way. Cold Fusion Components will allow us to create objects with methods that are reusable, and this will lead to a more object oriented approach to our system development. I just wish we were using the MX platform now as I struggle with the creation of a manufacturing item creation interface. So that’s what I took away in a nutshell.
Apple released new portables today. Mmmm 1 Ghz. Mmmmm Superdrive. Too bad Robert does not have the money necessary to purchase one of these items.
The Democrats got stomped yesterday, and the Republicans are now very comfortably in control of the country. While I choose not to directly associate myself with either party, I’ve always been more comfortable with the way our government was being run when each party had control of one of the major entities. I think that, from my perspective, the stomping the Democrats took has a lot to do with the lack of leadership and coherent messages from the Party itself. There were openings that they definitely did not execute on. The Republicans also seemed to outspend the Democrats. Perhaps they will get their shit together now. I doubt it though. I still find myself wishing for a legitimate third party. The barrier to entry makes this task a near impossible one.
After exercising my right to vote last night and taking a brief nap, I headed out, by myself, to the Amon Tobin show at the Echo Lounge in East Atlanta. Bonobo was the first DJ up, and he rocked. His internationally influenced jazzy hip hop style got my feet a tapping. Next up was Strictly Kev of DJ Food fame. I don’t know if I have ever seen a DJ who kept himself busier, lining one mix up after another and knocking them all down. Then there was a set, which was more scratching oriented, from P-Love. I wasn’t familiar with him prior to the show, but he was really good, and technically solid. Finally, Amon Tobin hit the stage manning his Final Scrath Pro setup. He was great, creating these beat driven soundscapes that are really hard to describe. I had to leave before the end of his set, it being a school night and all, but I left wanting to stay.
Picture from the Halloween party this weekend. Obviously, I’m in the back row on the right.
The thing about it is, when you have been with someone for 20 percent of your life, and then you aren’t with them suddenly, you really don’t have many stories or anecdotes that don’t contain some reference to that person. You suddenly have to do a mental search and replace every time you tell a story replacing that person’s name with “my ex-girlfriend.” At first, it seems incredibly unnatural to be doing this.
I went to see The Flaming Lips last night at the Variety Playhouse. It was good and zany, I was happy to get to see some of the amazing new material live. They had tons of fans onstage dressed in animal costumes. I know they were fans because I got my ticket for the sold out show from someone who had been chosen to wear one of the costumes. I guess they are touring with Beck, and this was the only non-Beck show they were doing on this tour, which worked out well for those of us in Atlanta. I used to like Beck a lot, now, not so much. Tonight, I’m off to see Amon Tobin.
Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys responds to the Washington Post article about their battle over a sample with James Newton. More copyright goodness in the response for those who can’t get enough of that stuff these days.
Please vote today.
One thing I haven’t seen mentioned in others' coverage of Devcon was the presence of Wi-Fi throughout the conference area. Macromedia had set up at least two Cisco wireless routers, as far as I could tell from using my Stumbler, that covered most of the session rooms even for my range limited TiBook. During the General Sessions, I discovered that other people using Mac OS X 10.2 were logged into the network and had their iChat apps launched with Rendezvous enabled. This meant that we all had the ability to discuss the keynotes with other people who were in the room without actually having to know who else in the room had a laptop and wi-fi. This was very interesting to me, even though the actual communications weren’t terribly useful this time.
A busy weekend on the heels of my trip to Orlando. Friday night, I got a chance to see one of the most innovative DJ’s I have ever heard, Z-Trip. He mixes music that you would never expect to hear a dj mix, and I think you just might have to see it to believe it. Saturday night, it was a Halloween party where the four amigos were the life of the party. Sunday, another trip to the Georgia Dome to see the Falcons win followed by the chance to see a friend perform some hilarious inventive comedy. The moral of the story is that I am trying very hard to stay busy, with limited success. The quick back story is that things ended recently between the woman I have been dating for the last seven years and I. Try as I might, I can’t stop thinking about her, missing her, mourning what has been lost, and wondering where life is going to take me now. I know that, with time, the pain I am in right now will pass, but while my mind is ready to move on, my heart just isn’t yet. It’s very sad. I thought that going away to Orlando would help me take my mind off things. Somehow I managed to forget that the last couple of times I have been there for pleasure it has been with her. It seemed that, everywhere I went, memories kept popping out.
Back from Macromedia Devcon, and I do believe my brain is somewhat full. I am also still a little tired. The show was good, and a very welcome distraction to everything else that has been going on in my life.
As I prepared for tomorrow’s roadtrip, I unwrapped a new 20 Gb iPod. Apple has really done a nice job of enhancing the second generation iPod’s. The most amazing thing is just how much music fits on this thing. It’s taking me quite a long time to sift through my library and put all of the music on the iPod mainly because I am doing it manually. I couldn’t do it automatically because the machine that I am attaching this iPod to has more than 20 Gb of music on it:-)
There is one song from the forthcoming audioslave cd up on their Web site. In case you aren’t familiar with audioslave, they are the musicians from Rage Against the Machine fronted by Chris Cornell of Soundgarden fame. Might be your thing, or it might not, but I am enjoying it quite a bit.
Yesterday, I went to see The Atlanta Falcons play for the first time this season. All I can say is that Michael Vick is an incredible athlete. Seeing him play gives me the same feeling that I got watching Michael Jordan early in his career. He is capable of things that no other player at his position can physically do. I really think, if he can stay healthy, that his career will be one that raises the Falcon franchise to a whole new level.
Today’s my birthday! That last sentence should not have an exclamation point at the end of it. The older I get, the less my birthday actually feels like my birthday instead of just another day. I don’t mean this in some depressing, bitter, or jaded way, it’s just an observation.
The new Jurassic 5 cd, Power in Numbers, is really good. It brings me back to the early nineties Strong Island stuff. Cut Chemist and Nu Mark do a fantastic job on the production front, which I thought was the weakest part of the last J5 release. Do yourself a favor, put down the Eminem cd, and pick this one up.
Alan Cooper: 14 Principles of Polite Apps (thanks Adam)
“Then one day, one will forget, then the other. One day, no one will know.” - Beneath Autumn Sky
A bunch of us went to the Atlanta Thrashers' home opener last night. I had a great time, despite the loss in overtime to Florida. I definitely plan on going to more games this year, but I can’t believe how expensive tickets are. We had decent seats, and they cost $60 each. That means that it cost the family of four sitting in front of me $240 to attend before snacks or anything else. I really think that pro sports have gotten out of control. After the game, Joan Jett played on the ice. She sounded great.
On a related note to the post below, I think that, due to the community aspects of blogging, it would be possible to write a piece of software that generated conversations that could occur between various bloggers when they meet and talk. Not that bloggers as a group are limited in topics of discussion, but that, knowing a particular blogger, and their daily surf lists it is possible to figure out both their general interests are and what their inputs have been over the last few days. You could use a pattern algorithm to then match the inputs and interests between the group, and probably accurately predict what the topics of conversation would be. This comes from having the sorts of conversations that I expected to have with Todd and Nathan.